


madder red

by harukatenoh



Category: RWBY
Genre: Angst, Family Drama, Fix-It of Sorts, Injury Recovery, M/M, post v7ch12
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-10
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:13:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24646216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harukatenoh/pseuds/harukatenoh
Summary: When Clover dies, a part of Qrow dies with him. When Clover comes back, however, it's a little more difficult to bring Qrow back as well.
Relationships: Clover Ebi & Winter Schnee, Qrow Branwen & Raven Branwen, Qrow Branwen/Clover Ebi
Comments: 15
Kudos: 60





	1. there's not much for me there

**Author's Note:**

> [taps mic] is this thing on? hello? yes? awesome [leans in very close] fuck u crwby
> 
> work title and chapter titles all from madder red by yeasayer

When Qrow had imagined the end of the world, he had thought of darkness and despair. It would be marked by sunset. An endless night to suffocate them all. 

He was wrong. Because now he is here, sitting as the rising sun paints the snow golden, and the world has ended. There is nothing else that can come after this.

Despite the morning rays, the light has left. And it will not come back.

Qrow is, for the first time in his miserable, lonely life, completely still.

It feels like time has come to a standstill. It feels like maybe, just maybe, if he sits here a little longer, with the cold he can no longer feel and the warmth he can never reach again, the person lying before him will open his eyes again. Like this is all just somebody’s idea of a joke, and if he just waits it out, and waits it out, the punchline will be revealed. 

Qrow’s never been one to entertain those kinds of stupid, fruitless fantasies, but he doesn’t— he can’t—

He doesn’t know how he can possibly accept this. There’s nowhere to go from here. Cold reality sinks into him, and he wants it to keep going. To dig further. To wrap icy fingers around his heart, and stop the beating in his chest.

Then. Out of nothing.

The crackle of a sound. Something familiar but long gone. It can’t be what he knows it is, but there’s nothing else in the world like that.

_Unbelievable._

Face still wet, eyes still stinging, Qrow looks up at his sister. 

Raven looks back down at him. Her eyes are cold. She’s stuck Omen slightly into the ground, a hand resting on its hilt, and Qrow’s eyes travel down the length of that sword to the snow, and he _aches._ The sight of blood-red in ice-white is something too familiar. Something he’ll never be able to forget again.

A little ways away, Harbinger lies there. Now dyed the colour of Omen. They’re a true matching pair now. A real sorry excuse for a family.

He looks away from his sister. Can’t quite bring himself to look at the body in front of him either, so he ends up staring at the sun; maybe if he looks long enough, he’ll go blind. 

Surely it’ll be some sort of bliss, to not have to look at a world without Clover.

Qrow hears Raven sigh. In his periphery, he sees her cross her arms.

“Oh, brother,” she says, gentle and mocking, “look at you.”

Qrow stares down at the bloody pin in his hands. 

“Here to finish me off?” he rasps. His voice comes out sharp and brittle.

He’s angry at her, he realizes. It curls up inside of him like flames licking up wood, and for a moment, he’s so angry that it smokes out all of his grief and disbelief. 

Only a moment, though. The fire dies down, and in its absence, the hurt steals its way back inside of him. And so he hurts. He will probably never stop hurting.

Raven huffs, light and airy. She’s being surprisingly… _friendly,_ though only by her own fucked-up measure, and not the rest of the world’s. That’s the thing, though. You can’t measure Branwens by the same yardstick you do everybody else. That’s a road that only leads to disappointment.

“If you really want me to,” she says with a shrug. Her hand tightens around Omen.

Qrow turns to glare at her, trying to gauge whether she’s being serious or not. He doesn’t… he doesn’t know if he can handle another fight against somebody he loves. Somebody he loves still, despite everything.

Then, he realizes what he had just thought, and winces. _That_ sure isn’t a pattern he wanted to discover.

His appraisal reveals that she _is_ serious. Mostly, at least. She’s being nice about it, though; she looks at him like she believes it really would be a mercy to kill him if he was asking. Like it’d be the right thing to do.

Of course that’s something Raven thinks. 

He jerks his head away. “Like I’d give you the pleasure,” he mutters darkly.

For a long moment, the only sound is the howling of the Solitas wind. Then Raven sighs, almost imperceptible in vastness.

“It wouldn’t be,” she says.

Turning against the wind, Qrow looks at her. “What?” he says. He has to blink snowflakes out of his eyes.

Raven stares back at him. “It wouldn’t be a pleasure,” she replies. Steady and assured.

The anger comes back. It burns through everything inside of Qrow. There’s _only_ anger.

He stumbles to his feet, hands clenched into fists and vision blurry. He’s unsteady where he stands and the winds cut through him easily and he’s still weak from the previous fight; in contrast, Raven stands a statue in the snow, watching him with a leaden gaze.

“Sure didn’t seem that way _last_ time we saw each other,” he spits. 

The corners of Raven’s mouth twitch downwards. “That time had been… a necessity.”

“A necessity?” Qrow snaps, so angry that he wonders if Raven can see it bleeding out of him, staining everything with red. “It was a necessity to try and kill me, was it? Sure gained you a lot, huh? I mean, look at where you are now!”

He sweeps an arm open to their surroundings. Raven looks at the tundra around them, but she knows what he really means.

He means _alone._ He means _stuck with nobody else around but me again._ Because that’s it. That is the two of them: twins and teammates and enemies. Raven can leave Summer and she can leave Taiyang and she can leave Yang, but she can’t leave him; they started their lives together and Qrow knows, one way or another, that they’ll be haunting each other in death. That’s the meaning of their family. The first time she left, it had hurt, but Qrow had known that it wasn’t the same for him as it was for the rest of STRQ. _That_ abandonment had come years later, at Haven.

Raven looks back at him again. Not a statue anymore. There’s a burn in her eyes now to match the burn in Qrow’s chest, and he recognizes the way her expression tightens. 

When Qrow is faced with his own faults, he falls back on his self-loathing. When Raven is, she falls back on her bloated pride.

“It was a necessity,” she repeats, tightening her hold on the words until they’re wrapped in iron. “My hand was forced, Qrow. I chose to do the right thing by _my family,_ no matter how hard the decision was.”

_I chose to do the right thing by my family, no matter how hard the decision was._

His ears echo.

He feels like he’s moving through honey, as the words sink in. They’re not the same but it’s _too close_ and Qrow feels like throwing up, his hands shaking, his breath catching. Again. Not _again._ Another stupid argument and he’s right back where it all started, right before it all fell apart for good, and fuck, he can’t let this happen _again._

Stumbling away from Raven, he looks around. Harbinger is still lying in the snow. He doesn’t know where Kingfisher has fallen; he can’t see it. There are tracks leading away in the direction that Tyrian had run off in, but he can’t see if they end or if they loop around and maybe Tyrian’s managed to find some place to hide and is just waiting for a moment of weakness, _any_ moment of weakness, to leap out and strike again. 

He can’t let that happen. His hands shake. 

Somebody walks towards him. He’s about to lash out, muscles coiled and fist clenched, but the blur in his periphery isn’t the whitepurpleblack that he’s come to associate with all his worst fears.

It’s red and black and nothing else—the colours of misfortune and blood and home.

Raven. She wraps a hand around his wrist. 

“Qrow,” she says, her voice low. Her eyes are wide. It’s an age-old kind of look. One that Qrow hasn’t been subject to in a long time.

Qrow sucks in a breath, and then does it again, and then does it again. Raven’s hand is surprisingly warm on his skin. 

The panic bleeds out of him. What comes to replace it is a bone-deep weariness. All of his anger has left now; the fire has died out completely. He can’t stoke the flames. Not when it’s been proven, utterly clearly, that he still thinks of Raven as family. Even if she doesn’t think that of him.

He drops his arm from where it was held up. Raven doesn’t let go.

Quiet and mourning, he looks away. In his other hand lies the pin, its ridges digging welts into his palm. There he stands; a dead man’s charm in one hand, and a sister who wants him dead holding him there.

“Raven,” he rasps. “I don’t want to fight.”

Raven lets his wrist go. “Good,” she says quietly. “Because I’m not here to fight.”

Qrow doesn’t know that he believes that. He steps away from her. “Then why are you here?” he asks, and his voice cracks on the last word. 

“For you.”

Qrow’s eyes sting. He blinks cold snow and warm tears out of him. Somehow, in all of his stumbling and flinching, he’s migrated towards Harbinger. It lies there, in the endless white. He feels sick looking at it. He knows exactly what it had wrought.

“Sorry to _disappoint,”_ he says, the words bitter on his tongue, “but I don’t have anything for you,”

He tries to sound angry, but mostly he sounds defeated. He is defeated. He doesn’t have anything for Raven because he doesn’t have anything at all. Everything has been carved out from inside of him.

Raven sighs.

“Qrow,” she says. “Come home.”

“I don’t have a home,” he responds quietly. It had been Raven, once, but they both know how that story ended. 

Then, years later, it had been teal eyes and a steady hand. They both know how that one ended too. Qrow’s just not cut out for _home._

Raven pulls out Omen and cuts the air. The portal opens in front of them, blood-red, ruby-red, luck-red. 

“Then make one,” she says. She walks through.

Qrow thinks he’s being left behind, maybe finally for good, but the portal stays open. He hesitantly allows himself to wonder where it leads.

He looks down at Harbinger, stained in his beloved’s blood. He looks back at his beloved, bled dry in the snow.

He looks at the portal.

 _The world has ended,_ his heart tells him, and it’s true. It has. The world has ended. 

Clover is dead, and laid in the grave alongside him lies every piece of goodness Qrow had fought for so hard in the past years to keep. He had collected those tiny, brief bits of hope and happiness and freedom, and had locked them away somewhere inside of him.

Now, Clover is dead in the Solitas cold. Now, those parts of Qrow are there with him.

Still. 

Still.

The tears come back in full force, but _still._ Still Qrow breathes. Still Qrow stands. He’s still here, and he’s alive even though he wishes it were otherwise. 

Qrow had made a vow some time ago. An _unbreakable_ sort of vow. A vow to never lie down and wait to die again.

Branwens are survivors. Raven has done terrible things; she has left, and she has run, and she has scorned, but she’s survived. And Qrow has done the same.

He thinks of his nieces, out there somewhere. He hopes that, if they’ve picked up anything from him at all, it’s this: the hardwired Branwen desperation to survive. 

When he leans down to pick up Harbinger, his hands shake. Still, he wraps his cold fingers around the hilt, and he lifts that familiar weight. With trembling fingers, he pins Clover’s charm to one of the rings on the clock.

He wants to look back. For a moment, he almost does. 

The red before him flashes, and he resolves himself: freezes over his heart and makes sure it’ll never lead him astray again.

He steps through the portal.


	2. maybe i've been gone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> feel like the opening chapter was a bit misleading, it's more of a prologue than anything... this fic is mainly going to be about clover. bc this is how im dealing with him being a bootlicker

When Clover wakes up, the world is unrecognizable.

Actually, it’s worse than that. When Clover wakes up, he can’t even recognize himself, though something tells him that this transformation had been years in the making, and it’s only now that he’s noticing.

He’d always wanted to be a hero. Always ready to give every bit of himself, blood and bone and breath, to the cause. He hadn’t realized how literal that would become.

Winter’s the one at his bedside when he wakes. She’s the one who lists off his medical condition, which is a step above having an impartial doctor do it, but not a very big one. 

She says, the words melting like snowflakes in his ear, “We managed to salvage most of your heart, but your lungs and spine had collapsed completely. Furthermore, you suffered severe cases of frostbite, exacerbated due to your blood loss. This chart details the…”

The words fade out in his ears. Clover looks down at himself. 

The metal shifts and ripples as he moves, perfect pieces that fit into a perfect whole. He hears them click into place when he clenches his hand, and hears them stretch outwards when he extends his fingers. The metal is painted the colour of his skin. From far enough away, one could mistake it for flesh and blood.

Up those close, however, all Clover sees is inorganic.

“Winter,” Clover says, interrupting the steady stream of sound that had been coming from her. She falls silent, blinking at him. 

He asks, “How am I not dead?”

Because he should be. He should be. He remembers feeling the life drain out of him, remembers feeling the endless cold set it. Atlas has the premiere medical system in all the world, but it’s still only the business of medicine; it’s not the business of  _ miracles.  _ Clover had heard Winter’s initial summary. He can see the medical charts.

The question begs itself:  _ how is he not dead? _

Winter looks away. She sighs. She puts down the clipboard on the table beside him, and looks so  _ tired _ that for a moment Clover regrets asking.

She straightens her shoulders and clasps her hands behind her back. She looks at him. Clover has a terrible, terrible feeling about this.

“You were,” she informs him, words calm and steady. The tone of voice they use when talking to victims. “You were clinically dead. There was nothing our doctors could do.”

The words echo and echo in his ears. He’s the one who asked, but… to hear that he should be dead—that he  _ had _ been dead. It’s… He feels… 

He doesn’t know. 

Winter turns her face away from him. “However, our achievements in biotechnology in the last few years have been astounding. When coupled with our research into aura, another… avenue, regarding your fate, was presented.”

Research into aura? Achievements in biotechnology? Clover regrets not paying attention to those divisions of the Atlesian science department when he could’ve; now, he feels unbelievably lost. What kind of research was being conducted that was able to achieve…  _ this? _

Atlas is incredible. A marvel of technology. A city where the possibilities are endless. A place worth fighting for. 

At least, Clover had once believed that.

He doesn’t know if he still does. It’s… hard for him to think, like this, still on some sort of pain medication and so sorely out of the loop that his head spins with everything he doesn’t know. 

“You brought me back from the dead?” Clover rasps. He scrapes metal fingers over a metal chest. He feels absolutely nothing.

Winter closes her eyes. 

For a moment, she looks more like a statue than human. Like one of her constructs: a person not quite there.

“We did,” she says. There’s a tremor in her voice. 

Then, she turns to look at him again, and the moment of weakness disappears. 

She continues with, “As you know, your aura is, essentially, your soul. We’ve been developing the technology to both capture aura and manufacture it synthetically, and…” she trails off, frowning. 

“And?” Clover prompts, bewildered. How long has this kind of development been going on? He doesn’t— he can’t figure out— what could  _ capturing and manufacturing aura _ possibly entail?

Winter sighs. “Some of the scientific explanation escapes me, but to my understanding, our scientists were able to synthesize your aura using your body, and then augmented it with aura volunteered by other people to rebuild it completely. The implants and prosthetics you now have both serve to house the technology required to continue manufacturing this aura, and also restore your major bodily functions. It’s… extremely complicated, and an unprecedented procedure,” and then she cuts herself off, pushing stray strands of hair back in her usual nervous gesture. 

Clover blinks at her, more shocked than he ever thought he could be.

She says, “Honestly, nobody was even sure that it would work.”

Clover can’t… gods, he can’t believe what he’s hearing. This is beyond imagination. Bringing somebody back from the dead is… well, an act of  _ god. _ Atlas, in all of its shining glory, had finally achieved something resembling divinity. Something truly impossible.

“I don’t… I don’t understand,” he confesses, because he’s still holding on for Winter to say something that will make this all make sense. There’s a disconnect between what he knows and what he can understand; he feels that he’s living and breathing, but it doesn’t make  _ sense. _ He should be dead. He had… he remembers regretting so many things, things that he never said and never did, he remembers wishing for more time or at least one last try, but that’s what  _ all _ dying people think. He had never dreamed of this happening. Dead is dead. It… it’s never been anything else.

Winter clicks her tongue, and fiddles with the controls for a panel by Clover’s bed. It projects a diagram of something that… oh. It’s him.

“Like I said,” Winter says, gesturing to the hologram, “I can’t really explain the process behind it. But, in essence you’re now closer in function to…” 

She pauses.

She bites her lip, and then looks away. “You’re closer in function to Penny than, say… well, say somebody like me.”

Oh. Right. Penny. Of course. She’s… she’s a synthetic being, but she has a soul, and thus has an aura. Clover has no issues with her whatsoever, so his current state of being is… fine. Normal. Perfectly acceptable.

Now that he’s paying attention, he can hear it. The quiet hum of some kind of motor inside the expanse of metal on his chest, as well as another sound that seems almost familiar. He stops, frowning down at the implant, and listens.

Past the whirring of machinery, there’s something else. A shimmer. A quiet tinkling. Surely… surely not.

He looks up at Winter, who seems to already have anticipated his question. Still, he rasps, “Is that Dust?”

She nods curtly. “The technology is powered by a combination of electric and hard-light Dust,” she tells him, pulling up another chart to be projected into the air. It’s him again, and although Clover can’t quite make sense of all the information, he can tell that it’s incredibly intricate. Winter gestures at the lit up sections representing Dust in the diagram. “The Dust is required for you to continue generating Aura, and in turn, your Aura activates the Dust. The hard-light constructs also aids the interaction between your organic flesh and the technological implants.”

Then, for the first time since he woke up, Winter offers him a tiny smile. To his own dismay, Clover feels himself welling up at the sight.

“You’re now the perfect paradigm of balance between humanity, technology and magic,” she says. “You’re a miracle, Clover.”

Clover doesn’t feel it.

He squeezes his eyes shut. He thinks that his hands would be shaking, if they were still flesh, but the metal lies still. 

Winter sighs. “I understand that it’s a lot to take in. I’ll give you some time to rest, and we can go over the finer intricacies later. I don’t want to overwhelm you.”

Clover nods. He murmurs, “Yes, thank you. I… think I need some space.”

“Of course,” Winter replies, her tone softening a fraction.

As Clover listens to the sounds of Winter shuffling papers and checking charts, he keeps his eyes closed. He tries to focus on what he can, listening to the beat of his heart moving alongside the hum of Dust, but he can’t shake the feeling that something’s terribly wrong.

In general, perhaps. Or maybe just with him.

_ Think,  _ he tells himself. _ Clear your head. _ He needs time to gather his thoughts. It’s surely been weeks since his… death, but to him, it feels like everything has happened within mere moments of each other. Tyrian appearing in the city. The warrant coming out. The fight with Qrow—oh, Brothers,  _ Qrow. _

Clover’s eyes snap open as Winter starts to step away, and he hoarsely calls out, “Winter, wait!”

She turns around, alarm in her eyes. “What’s wrong?” she says, briskly walking back to his bedside.

Clover’s on the verge of panicking, but he still forces himself to breathe before answering. It would do no good to jump to conclusions. He needs to be calm. Extract the information, and then make his decisions based on that.

He asks, quiet, “What happened to Qrow?”

For the first time since waking up, he’s aware of his entire self: aware of the way his heart races, the way his breath is catching in his lungs, the way his hands clench, the way his head aches. Everything comes together in perfect, painful harmony, remembering the look on Qrow’s face.

Winter’s expression turns dark. She says, “I’m sorry, Clover,” and Clover’s heart drops like a stone in the sky. No.  _ No. _ It can’t be. This wasn’t how it was supposed to turn out. _ This is all wrong. _

Clover’s about to tell her to get out, unsure if he can even manage his usual politeness with how violently his stomach is about to turn, when Winter keeps going.

“He hasn’t been brought in yet. The warrant is still standing, but we’ve been… stretched thin, lately, and there hasn’t been any time to dedicate to tracking down any of the people involved in the fallout of that night. I know that must not be what you want to hear, but—”

At that moment Clover finally finishes processing everything she had said.  _ Hasn’t been brought in yet. Tracking down any of the people. _ He’s alive.

Qrow is alive. Nothing Winter is saying is registering for him anymore.

“Oh,” he mumbles, covering his face with his hands in some attempt to hide the sheer amount of emotion running through him right now. “He’s alive. I—thank the  _ gods.” _

“Thank the  _ gods?”  _ Winter snaps, looking furious. “That bastard betrayed us and—and  _ killed you! _ If I could go after him myself, I would! I always knew he was good for nothing, but to turn on you li—”

“Winter,” Clover cuts in, “what are you  _ talking about?  _ Qrow didn’t—Qrow would never hurt me!”

_ But you’ve hurt him, _ his mind tells him. Clover firmly tells it to shut up. He needs to get to the bottom of this.

Winter turns to meet his gaze, and Clover is horrified to find her blinking tears out of her eyes. “Nobody else on the scene had a weapon that could cause you a wound like that,” she snaps, angrily brushing the tears away. “If it wasn’t him, then who?”

“It was Harbinger,” Clover says, unsure whether he should be reaching out or drawing back. He’s never seen Winter like this before. “But it wasn’t Qrow wielding it. It got knocked out of his hands and Tyrian picked it up and… he was the one who did it. It wasn’t Qrow. Winter, it  _ wasn’t his fault,” _

Suddenly, there seems to be nothing more important in the world to Clover than making her understand this. 

Winter stares at him, eyes glistening but still defiant. Her jaw’s set, and Clover can tell she doesn’t really believe him. He’s about to keep talking, the events of that night swirling around in his thoughts and determined to spill out, when Winter jerks her head to the side.

She steps away from the bedside and breathes in deeply.

“I think,” she says, “we should both get some rest. We can talk about this later,”

Clover stares at her: her posture held perfectly still, her expression coldly neutral. It belatedly occurs to him that it’s probably just as challenging for Winter to see him awake as it is for him to have woken up. He’s lost  _ so much time. _ What has happened since then? How much has he missed?

Exhaling slowly, he says, “That might be a good idea,”

There’s a deep weariness in him, one that seems to permeate through his artificial chest and into the depths of his heart. He’s exhausted, and still trying to come to terms with the fact that he’s…  _ alive, _ and nothing makes sense about the world he’s woken up in. 

Winter walks away. Then, when she’s reached the doorway, she stops. She’s framed in the darkness from the hallway beyond as she turns to look over her shoulder. Not quite at him, but at the ground near him.

“I… I’m really glad to have you back, Clover,” she says quietly. 

Clover wants to reply. He does. He wants to say something like,  _ I’m glad too, _ or  _ It’s good to see you, _ or  _ I’m here to help, _ but…

He doesn’t want to lie to her.

He stays silent. When Winter walks out, the door shuts behind her with a soft  _ click, _ and then Clover is alone.


End file.
